


None but Love's Goddess

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Adultery, Community: 52fandoms, Experimental, F/F, Femslash February, Iambic Pentameter, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You think that Spartan Helen willing lay <br/>in Troy's mean princeling's unenticing arms?</p>
<p>(a not entirely successful attempt at iambic pentameter)</p>
            </blockquote>





	None but Love's Goddess

You think that Spartan Helen willing lay  
in Troy's mean princeling's unenticing arms,  
her eyes undimmed by Aphrodite's work,  
Or that the swan-god's daughter, fierce and proud,  
would stoop to dally with a mortal man?  
No: Aphrodite's self lay in her arms  
in Paris' form - or, later, in her own,  
lips dark with wine, and loving, laughing, eyes,  
murmuring soft to Helen, 'Stay - what's Troy  
or Sparta, then, when all the world is here?'  
And Paris snored, and Helen gasped, and writhed,  
and Aphrodite smiled and kissed and pinched,  
the sea-born goddess making known her will,  
island and inland, cuckolding her pet.  
You think her Spartan honour did not chafe  
to see so many hundred souls sent down  
to cross Styx river, and she not their guide,  
with no spear nestled in her softened hand,  
in fight not of her will, but of her cause,  
wilfully, tamely penned in Troy's high walls,  
while men bled out and cursed her on the field?  
You think that Paris kept her there in Troy?  
You think she'd stay, but for a goddess' love,  
entrammeled in a cage of dull suspense,  
Helen of Sparta? - why, then, you don't know  
None but love's goddess could have wrought her so.


End file.
